HACKING UNCERTAINTY

With political and economic turbulence churning our business outlooks daily (or hourly)  we take a peek under the bonnet at the turbo-charged evolutionary engine driving Human Doubt.

This week MPs asked the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, which is comprised of In-House officials and external experts, just how confident they were in their ‘glide down’ approach to a 2% inflation target? 

Given the impact of Trump tariffs, potential Chinese and EU retaliation, a massively underperforming UK economy, etc., how could the MPC be certain they were on the right track?

And if they were heading in the right direction, was the BoE moving too fast or too slow? 

This last point, the speed of descent, was, once again, a major focus for division among the committee, prompting the bank’s governor, Andrew Bailey, to respond:

“There’s a huge amount of debate obviously about how you respond to uncertainty. One school of thought is that it causes you to react more cautiously. And that’s because in a sense you want to wait to see how it develops. That’s not an unreasonable view and one I certainly put some weight on. But it is not a reasonable view if you think there is a threat to the integrity of the anchor, which is the inflation target clearly. In that case the answer I think is that you should act more aggressively..…It isn’t always the case that you respond to uncertainty by being more cautious.”

The Noughties, ‘the decade of disruption,’ that brought us 9/11, Enron, The Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, rioting in England (and which kicked-off with widespread apocalyptic forecasts for the start of the New Millennium) also generated some interesting thinking on uncertainty. 

Building on theories* arising from another period of upheaval, the Seventies (think the Yom Kippur War, UK electricity blackouts and three-day-weeks, Watergate, the defeat of USA in Vietnam, etc) 2001 saw the publication of American Dale Brasher’s paper ‘Communication and Uncertainty Management, which, for the first time, suggested a spectrum of potential attitudes towards uncertainty, rather than just negative ones:

“…a person who believes himself or herself to be uncertain is uncertain. However, people have different appetites and tolerances for uncertainty. For some, the existence of uncertainty is stimulating or perhaps even exhilarating, whereas others can be highly motivated to reduce even the slightest degree of uncertainty. The idea of exhilarating uncertainty could best be illustrated by an individual’s decision to participate in an extreme recreational activity such as skydiving, bungee jumping or parasailing. Personal tolerance for uncertainty will determine how willing a person is to invest when the likelihood of the desired outcome is unclear; whether this investment is monetary, relational or otherwise.”

Four years later,* and in part building on Brasher’s work, Walid A. Afifi and Judith I. Weiner took a closer look at uncertainty and ‘interpersonal’ information-seeking:

“We began by identifying limitations in the vast literature on information seeking, then presented the theoretical structure for the Theory of Motivated Information Management. The theory proposes that the process starts with a gap between desired and actual uncertainty about an important issue.  That gap leads to the arousal of uncertainty-related anxiety. The motivation to reduce that anxiety triggers assessment of the utility of various information management strategies for achieving that end. Following a set of outcome and efficacy assessments, individuals choose a strategy they consider the most advantageous, given physiological, cognitive, social and behavioural concerns and cognitive limitations. Individuals who decide to seek information interpersonally then engage the information provider into action.”

From this starting point, Afifi and Weiner, proposed a three phase model for their theory:

PHASE 1 Interpretation

The discrepancy between the desired amount of uncertainty and the actual amount of uncertainty generates an emotional response (anxiety, fear, shame, guilt, anger, etc.) and these emotions ‘mediate the association between uncertainty discrepancy and the information- management process.' 

PHASE 2 Evaluation

The theory subdivides this into two areas:

Outcome Expectancy, the expected outcomes that a search for information may produce.        “Will seeking information help or hurt me?”

Efficacy Assessments, the extent to which we think we will be able to successfully reduce the emotional response (anxiety, etc,) through such a search:

Communication efficacy - “Can I have this conversation?"

Coping efficacy – “Can I handle what I might learn?”

Target efficacy – “Is the person I’m asking willing and able to answer?”

PHASE 3 Decision

Based on the evaluation above, we then decide to either:

Seek relevant information, avoid relevant information or make a ‘cognitive reappraisal’ 

i.e. we shift the goal-posts to avoid the uncertainty discrepancy, and the emotions it generates, rather than looking for information, and, in doing so, postpone or ignore the situation.

It must be stressed that much of the work outlined above was carried with a view to the health sector, where avoiding relevant information, for very human reasons, can have massive consequences. In their original paper, Afifi and Weiner quote a 1999 report which found that: ‘57% of individuals with hereditary risk of colon cancer declined an offer of genetic testing.’

But fortunately for us in The Business of Pleasure, the stakes are not generally quite so high (‘it’s a ticket not a kidney’) but that doesn’t mean that we feel the uncertainty any less keenly, especially when we are opening a new show, or attraction, launching a new campaign or pricing initiative, or staring into a ‘trough’ in demand that appears to be as deep, and scary, as the San Andreas Fault.   

It will be very interesting to see how the turmoil of the 2020’s (Covid, the War in Ukraine, Trump… and we’re only halfway through the decade!) further shapes our understanding, and ability to cope better with, uncertainty? 

Maybe (and maybe radically) we should start by being more honest about our uncertainty? Rather than try to act supremely confident, decisive, and in total control for fear of looking weak?

 One of Bob Iger’s first high profile appearances within Disney (I was told) was an assembly, in London, of all the firm’s top executives.  They had come together to learn about a major new initiative which was going to revolutionise the global Experience Industry and send Disney’s share price through the roof.  When it was his turn to speak, Iger, Disney’s newly-appointed CEO, rose to his feet and (allegedly) said something along the lines of:  “This sounds really great. Everybody tells me it’s really great. But you know, I’m not so sure.”

By contrast, and following a far, far smaller meeting (also in London, and about the same time, but there any comparison ends) my Line Manager took me aside to (gently) quiz me over part of our (successful) pitch to a West End show:

“Are you sure about what you said in there, DT. I mean, you sounded so authoritative, and they totally bought, but..?”

To which I could only reply:  “Was I f***!” 

DT (Doubting Thomas) 7 June. 2025